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Renewed tensions over Murray-Darling plan

TIM PALMER: For a brief moment it looked as if some ground had been made in the battle over the future of the Murray-Darling Basin. The Ministerial Council had apparently found some agreement on how to return water to the rivers and interest groups were applauding their efforts.

But that sense of goodwill evaporated today as the Murray-Darling Basing Authority revealed what it could accept from the ministerial plan, and what it couldn't.

The authority approved of setting a movable target for environmental flows - between 2400 and 3200 gigalitres. But the authority's own starting point is still considered by those upstream to be too much and by those downstream too little.

Once again everyone involved, believes they've been hard done by.

Rebecca Brice reports.

REBECCA BRICE: It's the revised basin plan incorporating the authority's response to the ministers' responses to the revised version of the draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan - another step in a long process and to some, not much of a step.

The South Australian Premier, Jay Weatherill.

JAY WEATHERILL: We've seen some minor improvements, the removal of the 2015 review that would simply have introduced greater uncertainty and also the commitment to developing a strategy to marriage constraints on river flows that prevent better environmental outcomes being achieved.

So there have been some minor changes, but they do not go far enough and we'll continue to fight for a better plan.

REBECCA BRICE: The big change is the inclusion of a process to adjust the amount of water which goes into environmental projects each year. The ministers wanted a figure between 2400 and 3200 gigalitres, and the authority has included that in the plan.

The Victorian Water Minister Peter Walsh says the principle is right but there are questions about how the change will be achieved.

PETER WALSH: At this stage we don't believe that their baseline is the baseline that they had in the original plan and we're not happy with their methodology, so while the principle is agreed and I do acknowledge that, this is something that we've fought for very hard.

We need to make sure that the methodology is correct otherwise we'll never be able to achieve what we're talking about.

REBECCA BRICE: The New South Wales Irrigators' Council says the authority seemed happy to consider all the areas of agreement between the ministers. But chief executive Andrew Gregson says it's ignored some key points of difference raised by New South Wales and Victoria.

ANDREW GREGSON: From the outset the Murray-Darling Basin Authority would only consider unanimous changes from the Ministerial Council which effectively handed a veto to South Australia and as a result, we've ended up with the sensible and practical suggestions of New South Wales and Victoria being comprehensively ignored.

REBECCA BRICE: How has that handed a veto to South Australia?

ANDREW GREGSON: Well both New South Wales and Victoria as the two states that socially and economically have the most to lose in this whole process, suggested that there needed to be a maximum amount of entitlement that was held and the balance had to be found from environmental works and measures and from attracting water entitlements from areas other than buyback.

South Australia disagreed with that, and as a result that wasn't even considered by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the advances of Victoria and New South Wales to achieve the basin plan which could be agreed by all were effectively thwarted by that veto.

PETER OWEN: This plan still fundamentally fails to recognise what this river needs to be sustainable, and the science is clear - we need to reduce the amount we currently take from the river each year by at least 4000 gigalitres, and we're way below that.

So any accusation that South Australia has gotten everything that it asks for is ridiculous. It hasn't got a healthy river and that's all it asks for.

REBECCA BRICE: The New South Wales Irrigators' Council also accuses the authority of trying to sidestep Parliament. Andrew Gregson again.

ANDREW GREGSON: What they want is an adjustment mechanism that allows them to increase the sustainable diversion limit resumption, that is the 2,750 to go up and this is in their words, without recourse to parliament.

Now subordinated legislation is all well and good, but the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has proved pretty comprehensively that they can't and won't listen to stakeholders, now they won't listen to state governments and what they're proposing is to not have to listen to the Parliament of Australia.

This really is bordering on the absurd.

REBECCA BRICE: Now the attention will shift from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to the Federal Water Minister Tony Burke. His Victorian counterpart, Peter Walsh, again.

PETER WALSH: There is this three-week period where the state ministers will be working with the Commonwealth Minister to lobby him and put pressure on him to make changes that better reflect what the consensus document from the ministers was on the 9th of July. It was no small feat to get all the ministers, including the Commonwealth Minister, to actually agree on a letter of disagreement with the authority and we expect the instructions from the ministers on the 9th of July to be adhered to.

REBECCA BRICE: Tony Burke is also in the sights of the South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, who maintains he'll go to the High Court if the plan doesn't change before it's tabled in Federal Parliament later this year.